[Histling-l] "Language change in English and beyond: Linguistic theory and historical corpora" - Call for papers

[Nikolaos Lavidas]

Dear Colleagues,
the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens organizes a workshop on
"Language change in English and beyond: Linguistic theory and historical
corpora".

Invited speakers:
Jóhanna Barðdal (Ghent University)
Alexander Bergs (University of Osnabrück)
Amalia Moser (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens)
Ioanna Sitaridou (University of Cambridge)

Date: 14-15 March 2019
Location: Athens, Greece

Call Deadline: 1 December 2018

Call for Papers:
Explanations of language change are always at the center of debates on the
nature of language and languages. The proposed causes of language change
vary extensively and include internal and external factors of change,
universal principles and language-specific properties, types of language
contact. The proposed analyses of diachronic data are typically informed
by different linguistic theories (generative, cognitive/ functional,
constructional) and, conversely, have opened up new directions for
linguistic theories. Grammaticalization and constructionalization, economy
and reanalysis, syntactic diglossia, and analogy are examples of
perspectives that have derived from diverse theoretical backgrounds and
the cross-linguistic investigation of change (e.g., Kroch 1989, Yang 2002,
van Gelderen 2004, 2010, Bergs & Diewald 2008, Croft 2000, Barðdal et al
2015).

In recent years, a new direction of historical research has appeared with
diachronic corpora (particularly, annotated corpora) that facilitated the
development of a quantitative basis of historical linguistic studies. A
significant question in all relevant studies concerns the contrast between
continuity and discontinuity patterns in the diachrony of languages – in
other words, what remains stable and what changes over time. Quantitative
approaches may provide important insights on the domains and phenomena of
continuity, change, or variation. The diachrony of English, for instance,
has been the target of a rich tradition of corpus-based studies from
diverse theoretical backgrounds (e.g., Rissanen 2008, Kytö 2012, Traugott
2008 and elsewhere, Hilpert 2016), and several surveys of grammatical
change were based on resources that include the Helsinki corpus, the
archer corpora, the Brown family of corpora, and the Penn Parsed corpora.
Significant challenges in the case of diachronic corpora may include the
use of heterogeneous data of “text languages” due to, for instance, text
transmission, absence of a language norm, or presence of different
dialects for the author and the copyists (Schøsler 2005). However, the
advantages of corpora for diachronic research are numerous and easily
observable. For instance, diachronic corpus-based studies may even exclude
a theoretical hypothesis; analyses based on corpus studies include the
absence of effects, which can exclude hypotheses that would expect these
particular effects (Hilpert & Gries 2016).

The aim of the workshop is to bring together scholars from different
theoretical frameworks interested in systematic explanation of language
change and the interrelation between current linguistic theories and
corpus diachronic data; the integrative basis is the special focus on (i)
the interface of semantics and syntax mainly (but not exclusively) in the
history of English, and (ii) the implications of corpus-based,
quantitative analyses for researching diachrony.

The issues to be addressed include:
• Modern approaches to explanations of change in the interface of
semantics and syntax (in English and other languages); approaches to
change and variation in the interface of syntax and semantics in earlier
periods as well as currently and in real time.
• Universal constraints and principles of language change (e.g., Economy,
Reanalysis, Analogy); Is it possible to predict the direction of change?
• Constructional approaches to language change and their relation to
corpus-based research.
• Contact as an explanation of change: approaches to historical
bilingualism and language contact; case studies of contact-induced changes
in English and beyond.
• Ways of explaining language change and variation: corpora and
quantitative linguistic methodology; challenges of creating diachronic
corpora; Corpus-based case studies.

The workshop will be held on March 14-15, 2019, in Athens, Greece. We
invite papers on all above-listed and related issues. Please send us
(Nikolaos Lavidas nlavidas at enl.uoa.gr; Kiki Nikiforidou
vnikifor at enl.uoa.gr) a 300-word abstract of your paper no later than
December 1, 2018. Notification of acceptance will be sent by December 20,
2018.

Nikolaos Lavidas & Kiki Nikiforidou
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
Faculty of English Language and Literature
Department of Language and Linguistics
nlavidas at enl.uoa.gr; vnikifor at enl.uoa.gr

References
Barðdal, J., E. Smirnova, L. Sommerer & S. Gildea (eds.). 2015. Diachronic
Construction Grammar. Constructional Approaches to Language. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Bergs, A. & G. Diewald. 2008. Constructions and Language Change. Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Croft, W. 2000. Explaining Language Change. An Evolutionary Approach.
London: Longman.
Gelderen, E. van. 2004. Grammaticalization as Economy. Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Gelderen, E. van. 2010. Features in reanalysis and grammaticalization. In
E. C. Traugott & G. Trousdale (eds), Gradience, Gradualness and
Grammaticalization, 129-147. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hilpert, M. 2016. Change in modal meanings: Another look at the shifting
collocates of may. Constructions and Frames 8.1, 66-85.
Hilpert, M. & S, Th. Gries. 2016. Quantitative approaches to diachronic
corpus linguistics. In M. Kytö & P. Pahta (eds.), The Cambridge Handbook
of English Historical Linguistics, 36-53. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Kroch A. 1989. Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change.
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Kytö, M. 2012. New perspectives, theories and methods: corpus linguistics.
In A. Bergs & L. J. Brinton (eds.), English Historical Linguistics: An
International Handbook, 1509-1531. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Rissanen, M. 2008. Corpus linguistics and historical linguistics’. In A.
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Schøsler, L. 2005. Working on language change by using historical corpora:
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Traugott, E. C. 2008. Grammaticalization, constructions and the
incremental development of language: Suggestions from the development of
degree modifiers in English. In R. Eckardt, G. Jäger & T. Veenstra (eds.),
Variation, Selection, Development. Probing the Evolutionary Model of
Language Change, 219-250. Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Yang C. 2002. Grammar competition and language change. In D. Lightfoot
(ed.), Syntactic Effects on Morphological Change, 367-380. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.